In March 2015, the initial investors for the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF) were announced at the World Health Organization Global Dementia Conference, where Health Ministers from over 60 countries attended the Conference to meet leaders from other multinational organizations, NGOs, philanthropic organizations and technical experts.

In 2013, the UK hosted the G8 Dementia Summit and subsequently coordinated global activity around Dementia. One strand of work has led to the publication, in July 2015, of Raj Long’s independent report Finding a path for a cure for Dementia: An independent report into an integrated approach to dementia drug development.

In order to achieve the G8 Summit Commitment to finding a disease-modifying therapy or cure for dementia by 2025, it became clear that steps would need to be taken to ‘mitigate the market failure’ that is undermining dementia research and drug development efforts.

The World Dementia Council (WDC) has published a report setting out the progress it has made against its five priorities in the past year, as well as calling for further action to tackle dementia globally.

Young leaders in the field of dementia are attending the World Health Organization’s First Global Ministerial Conference on Global Action Against Dementia from 16-17 March 2015, to present their recommendations for the future work of the World Dementia Council (WDC).

The Global Action Against Dementia team and the International Dementia Innovation Unit pushed the delivery of the First Ministerial Conference on Global Action Against Dementia led by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 16 and 17 March.

Raj Long, Senior Regulatory Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and independent expert, has produced an executive summary outlining her recommendations to address the current state of dementia drug development. Focusing on the steps that would help overcome the current challenges, the executive summary will be part of a report due to be published in April 2015. The report forms part of the ambition to help drive towards the G8 dementia summit’s goal of a cure or disease modifying therapy for dementia by 2025.

The World Dementia Council (WDC) has issued a statement about dementia risk reduction and has made this one of their five priority areas of work.

The WDC considers dementia risk reduction to be a critical element of the global dementia agenda. At their third meeting in October 2014, members of the Council concluded that, while further research in this area is still clearly needed, the growing evidence base strongly suggests that cognitive decline at the population level could be affected by behaviour changes that reduce cardiovascular risk factors.